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Tobias Wolff in Conversation

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City Arts & Lectures

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Partner:: City Arts & Lectures
Location:: City Arts & Lectures
San Francisco, CA
Event Date:: 04.01.08
Speakers:: Vendela Vida,; Tobias Wolff
Tags:: fiction; memoir; author; short stories

Summary: Tobias Wolff is a contemporary master of short fiction, conjuring a full emotional range within the form's compression. His widely-anthologized stories have received three O. Henry Awards and are collected in Back in the World, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, The Night in Question, and the recent Our Story Begins.

The protagonists of Wolff's short stories often struggle with moral quandaries, unable to reconcile what they know to be true with what they feel to be true. Wolff explores similarly existential themes in his childhood memoir This Boy's Life and In Pharoah's Army, the story of his reluctant Vietnam service.

While he is best known for his short stories and memoirs, Wolff is also the author of the PEN/Faulkner award-winning novella The Barracks Thief and novels including Old School. He currently teaches creative writing at Stanford University - City Arts & Lectures

Bio

Vendela Vida

Vendela Vida is an American novelist, journalist, and editor who lives in San Francisco with her husband, writer and publisher Dave Eggers. She graduated from San Francisco University High School in her hometown before attending Middlebury College as an undergraduate. She received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

She has written three books, Girls on the Verge, And Now You Can Go, and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. She co-founded and co-edits the monthly periodical The Believer. She also edited The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers.

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff is the author of numerous books, including the novel "Old School," parts of which originally appeared in The New Yorker; a novella, "The Barracks Thief," which won a PEN/Faulkner Award; four short-story collections; and two memoirs, "This Boy's Life" and "In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War." His most recent book, "Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories," contains several stories that originally appeared in the magazine.

Chapters

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30 min 14 sec

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01.: Self-Limitations

03 min 55 sec

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02.: Endings

04 min 55 sec

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03.: The Short Story Transformation

02 min 08 sec

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04.: The Tragic Character: External Causes

04 min 22 sec

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05.: Reading Excerpt: "Bullet in the Brain"

02 min 52 sec

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06.: Origin of the Story

03 min 07 sec

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07.: The Short Story Daily Process

03 min 02 sec

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08.: Reading Excerpt: "The Benefit of the Doubt"

02 min 34 sec

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09.: Giving People the Benefit of the Doubt

02 min 57 sec

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: Watch Full Program

30 min 14 sec

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Tobias Wolff on the Tragic Character

04 min 46 sec

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Authors Vendela Vida and Tobias Wolff discuss the motif of the tragic character in his work and the external causes that play on him.
Tobias Wolff Reads from 'Bullet in the Brain'

02 min 55 sec

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Author Tobias Wolff reads an excerpt from his well known short story Bullet in the Brain.
Tobias Wolff Reads 'The Benefit of the Doubt'

02 min 44 sec

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Author Tobias Wolff reads an excerpt from his story The Benefit of the Doubt.
Watch Full Program

30 min 14 sec

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Encyclopædia Britannica Article

short story: Brief fictional prose narrative. It usually presents a single significant episode or scene involving a limited number of characters. The form encourages economy of setting and concise narration; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but seldom fully developed. A short story may concentrate on the creation of mood rather than the telling of a story. Despite numerous precedents, it emerged only in the 19th century as a distinct literary genre in the works of writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Kleist, Edgar Allan Poe, Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, and Anton Chekhov.; short story on britannica.com